Referral traffic from AI platforms grows despite publishers’ attempts to block crawlers

Traffic getting sent to publishers’ sites from AI platforms like ChatGPT and Perplexity is growing. And while that makes sense for the publishers that have signed deals with those companies to receive attribution for their content surfaced on those AI chatbot or search platforms, data shows that referral traffic is growing even to sites that are attempting to block those platforms’ crawlers.

Execs at three large digital media companies told Digiday they have seen referral traffic from Open-AI owned ChatGPT increase recently.

The Atlantic saw a “significant” increase in traffic from ChatGPT in the past few months. Referrals rose by more than 80% from December to January, according to a spokesperson. The Atlantic signed a deal with OpenAI in May 2024.

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